"It was special. I would get up and peek down the steps to see who was coming in and who was going out," she added.

Musician Jon Batiste said the parade of music and cultural pioneers shaped a young Aretha Franklin.

"She's a baby, and they're trading stories with her and she's feeling their frequency and their vibration and they're teaching her music," he said.

Franklin was born in Memphis, but the queen found her soul after moving to the Motor City when she was 2.

She sang at the New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father was pastor, and organized the famous Walk to Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech to more than 100,000 marchers.

Rev. Dr. Jim Holley has known the Franklins for over 40 years.

"Anybody that was somebody at that day and time, they would have to come through Detroit and come through New Bethel," he said. "Of course she basically was part of that and she grew up with that."

Her father was a towering influence on her life and career. After Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, she sang at his funeral.

For Franklin, her music and her past, were inextricably linked to her respect to all the people who helped raise her.

"When she decided to die she came to the city of Detroit ... downtown and that was her choice," Holley said.

You may take the queen out of Detroit, but you could never take Detroit out of the queen.